Geolocating Yourself? In Europe, You’re Not Alone

Exposure 2010, the recent study by Orange and TNS, makes for some interesting reading for the location industry. Although it should be taken with a large pinch of salt from the pot labelled lies, damned lies and statistics, the study’s report shows the significant increase in use of geolocation services within the mobile space.

In the UK, France, Spain and Poland, geolocation services occupy the 3rd, 2nd, 1st and 2nd slots respectively for most used mobile services. While the report only breaks geolocation down into two categories, streetmap/GPS and social networks, it’s not difficult to see how the perception that location is finally going mainstream is worth some merit.

It would have been nice to see a deeper breakdown by mapping service and social network but, in Europe at least, location and place seem to be making significant strides towards ubiquity.

Coverage of the report is available in a variety of places online including the EIN presswire as well as an overview of the study from Orange UK.

Written by

A self-professed map addict, Gary has worked in the mapping and location space for over 20 years through a combination of luck and occasional good judgement. Gary is co-founder of Malstow Geospatial, which provides handmade, professional geospatial consulting. A Fellow of the RGS, he tweets about maps, writes about them and even makes them.

Published 27 Feb 2014

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Christopher Osborne said ...

One key point Gary, the report categorises the most popular mobile media usage as email, social networks and geo-location services.
It does not refer to use of location based social networks at all, presumably as they represent such a tiny user base. What it does show is that the overwhelming use of geolocation services on a mobile is still *a map with GPS*.
Mind you, your own usage analysis of Ovi tells you that - http://conversations.nokia.com/2010/10/13/poll-results-how-do-you-use-ovi-maps/